BENGALURU: When city-based Pradeep Menon quit his job in a multinational IT company in the early ‘00s, wanting to start a tattoo studio, he had no source of income and was completely dependent on his family. But his idea didn’t get much support from the latter, who wanted him to get into the 9-5 groove. Yet, Menon was determined to pursue his dream. Two decades on, he is celebrating a landmark moment and the risk he took back in the day that has paid off.
It so happened that Menon decided to get a tattoo on a whim sometime in 1999 while on a work assignment in Mumbai. After some hunting, he found a studio run by a practicing psychologist. The late Dr Jehagir Kurian ran the studio in the same building where he was practising medicine. Watching Dr Kurian work while waiting for his turn, Menon felt that his destiny might be with the art form. “I used to do a lot of sketching until high school. So I thought that tattooing might help me capitalise on those skills,” Menon shares.
After much persuasion, Dr Kurian agreed to teach Menon, who immediately quit his job and started interning at the studio. After six months and much practice on himself, he was finally ready to go on his own. “The first tattoo I did on myself didn’t heal well, and Dr Kurian was upset and didn’t want me to continue. But he reluctantly agreed to let me practice after some persuasion from one of his other students,” he says.
Having signed a non-compete agreement with Dr Kurian, Menon returned to Bengaluru with newly-acquired skills. But with his parents against the idea, he had lost hope until a chance encounter with a random stranger on a train journey who helped him realise his dream. “When I told this gentleman that I had done most of the tattoos myself and that I was looking to start a studio of my own, he told me that he would be willing to invest,” Menon adds.
Within a short span of time, Rao’s business acumen had helped Menon set up a small and hygienic studio out of a spare room at his parents’ home in Fraser Town. Initially, Menon’s clients were only through word of mouth during weekends. Slowly, his techniques and designs grew diverse. Around 2005, the then Miss Sri Lanka, Jacqueline Fernandez was among Menon’s growing list of clients. But the following year, his work for an anthropologist, in his sixties, caught widespread attention on slowly growing interest, leading to an explosion in popularity of his studio.
Now, his studio, Dark Arts The Tattoo Studio in Koramangala, has a range of clientele, from 18 to 65, but college students who initially helped him grow his base are no longer its primary clientele, given the cost (`3000++). Menon believes in ensuring that the work they put in is cherished rather than being a symbol of regret. “If someone comes to us and asks us to work within a budget, I always advise them to instead save money, and get something that they absolutely like,” he shares.
In 2017, Menon founded an association to act as a self-governing body for various independent tattoo artists and studios in the city. As founding president, he has established strict standard operating practices to ensure that clients would receive consistent, hygienic, and good quality service from all the member studios. “Every member goes through a rigorous process, where we go through their portfolio, and skill curve and ensures it is up to our standards,” he says, adding, “We encourage our members to only use materials and supplies from vetted suppliers. We don’t want them using supplies sourced from sketchy sources that might lead to harmful effects on the clients.”
A chance turn of events led this tattoo artist to turn it into his profession. As his studio hits the two-decade mark, Pradeep Menon chats with CE about working with the who’s who, including Bollywood actor Jacqueline Fernandez